New2view's Blog   Life on The Blue Marble

B.C. Coast Inside Passage rescue!

We were half way across Queen Charlotte sound, between Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii on the beautiful Inside Passage coastal maritime route.

Our B.C. ferry ‘Queen of Prince Rupert’ was enroute from Prince Rupert to its home port at Kelsey Bay on Vancouver Island when a distress call came from a fishing boat.
A crewman on the boat was suffering from severe frostbite, owing to the harsh winter conditions at the time.

The captain ordered immediate rendezvous with the fish boat because the speed of our ferry was able to bring him to a help destination much sooner than otherwise.
The difficulty was there was very heavy sea condition in Queen Charlotte sound, not unusual and not pleasant to endure!

As we paused to allow the fish boat to approach on the windward side. First officer and crew members, including me, lowered a life boat half way down the ship’s side in order to offload the patient from the lessor vessel. It was a violently windy night with very heavy seas!

I was the bowman in the life boat while the first officer was the coxswain at the stern. As the boat approached it was seriously heaving from side to side, being a much smaller vessel than ours. Over the howling wind I shouted to the first officer; “any chance we will get caught between us?“ To which he shouted back in typical British stiff upper lip fashion; “no I don’t think so!“

Sure enough as that sizeable heaving fish boat closed in, pushed by wind and sea, it literally rolled to its port (left) about 30 degrees and cracked our very stout fiberglass lifeboat against our ship’s side like a hard boiled egg!

As it did so all lifeboat crewmen had no option but to jump, en masse onto the upper deck of the large fish boat, because we were hanging over the water in a broken life boat with no chance to return to the upper deck of our own ship!

Only the first officer was left clinging desperately onto a life line to the davit, (a crane for lowing the lifeboat). Seeing the life-threatening situation some crewmen shouted from the fish boat; “hang on sir!” Meanwhile the boat heaved sharply back the other way, to starboard, leaving his only means of escape to get hoisted back up by those crew on the ferry’s upper deck, which was done!

Somewhat miraculously no one had fallen between the two ships into the boisterous sea, since the chance of survival rate given sea temperature and conditions was slim and none!

The fish boat Captain now wisely maneuvered around to the stern of our ferry, butting up to the car deck.  With loading door open it allowed all of us, including the patient, to jump over the bow and return to our ship. It was a decidedly less risky method of transfer than the first attempt, live and learn!

I never learned how the frost bitten fisherman crewman made out, but presumably our urgent response was well worthwhile.